When Irish Eyes are Smiling
by Tuch
Summary: Doyle makes a brief trip from beyond the grave to help Angel get back to basics.


When Irish Eyes Are Smiling  
  
Rating: G  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em. Never did, never will.  
  
Notes: I got Angel season 1 on DVD for Christmas and got to missing Doyle all over again, so this is my self-therapy. Hope you enjoy it.  
  
* * *  
  
Angel's gaze bore into the tombstone at his feet. It was small, and the way it reflected the light of the full moon overhead made it seem almost like a beacon in the neatly trimmed grass. The cemetery was empty, but then, it usually was at three in the morning. Angel sometimes came here when he needed some quality brooding time away from the others. He traced his finger over the etching on the tombstone as he set a can of beer on the grass.  
  
"Got something for you, Doyle. I think you'll like this one."  
  
It was a ritual Angel had begun after Doyle's death. He came to his friend's grave a couple of times a year - on Doyle's birthday and the anniversary of his death - with an open can of beer in hand. It was all he could do, and it made him feel better to think that somehow, somewhere, Doyle appreciated it. There hadn't been much of Doyle left to bury - not even enough to fill the plastic bag Angel had used to carry out his remains. Only a handful of ashes. But he'd felt wrong just letting the ashes scatter in the wind, so he and Cordy held a memorial service. They called everyone in Doyle's address book, and still only a dozen or so people showed up. There were Angel and Cordy, of course, and Harry and Doyle's mother. A few others were friends of Doyle that, by some miracle, he hadn't owed money to. Then they scraped up the cash for a burial and a tombstone. Angel wanted some small spot of his world to note his friend's short life - and heroic death.  
  
"Dammnit, Doyle, I wish you were still here," he said. His heart ached, and he was surprised by the sudden moistness in his eyes. He hadn't known Doyle very long - less than a year. And it wasn't like he'd never been exposed to death before. Hell, he'd killed more people than he could count. But for some reason Doyle had stuck with him. Maybe it was the fact that he'd been the one to first set Angel on his path. Or maybe it was because Doyle had been so much like himself - a demon with a questionable past trying to do good in the world. Or maybe it was because Doyle had been one of the few pure souls Angel had ever known.  
  
He chuckled at the thought. Doyle would be the first to dispute the notion of him being a "pure soul." But Angel knew better. Doyle had lived life on the edge, playing games with people who would kill him as soon as look at him. But Angel doubted he'd ever done anything deliberately malicious in his life.  
  
Had it really been only four years since his friend's death? It felt more like 400. So much had happened in the intervening years that his early months in LA had taken on a dreamlike quality. Doyle was the before time. Before Wolfram & Hart, before Spike and Wesley and Gunn and Fred. Before Connor.  
  
"You would not believe everything that's happened," he told the headstone. It didn't answer, and he sat cross-legged in the grass to be at eye level with it. "Where do I start?"  
  
He eventually decided to start with Connor's birth. He told Doyle all about how Darla had staked herself in that dirty alley, about Wesley's betrayal, about Holtz's kidnapping of Connor. He brought his friend up to speed on how he'd come to be the CEO of the world's most evil law firm.  
  
"I don't know how to explain this," Angel told the marble, "but I feel like I'm losing my soul a little more every day. Not to the point where I'm going to become Angelus, but I'm not even sure what the hell I'm doing anymore."  
  
He sighed, and he rested his head heavily in his hand. He didn't allow himself to get emotional often, and certainly not with his friends. He was honest enough to admit to himself that he probably wouldn't be telling any of this to Doyle if the half-demon had been alive to hear it.  
  
"Sometimes I think you made the wrong choice," he said softly. "You died in my place because you thought I could make a difference. And I have. But I'm not sure it's been a good one. Why the hell did you have to stay dead, anyway?"  
  
It would have be a ridiculous question coming from anyone else, but Angel didn't feel ridiculous. People came back from the dead all the time. There was Buffy, and Spike, and Darla. Even Angel had made it back from the depths of hell. So why was Doyle still on the other side of the grass? He'd begged the Oracles to bring him back, and they'd flat-out refused. If only Doyle hadn't died things would be so much different.  
  
He sprawled out on the grass over Doyle's grave. The sky was clear above, and he was far enough away from the city to allow the stars to twinkle overhead. Angel started counting them, and eventually his eyes drifted shut. Just as he felt himself slip into the space between dreams and the waking world, a loud bang sent him upright. His eyes opened, and it took him a moment to get his bearings, because he wasn't in the cemetery anymore. He stood in a warehouse now. No, not a warehouse. The inside of a freighter. It was dark except for a dim light from somewhere overhead. He looked up, but he couldn't find its source. Angel was lucid enough to realize that he was dreaming, but his dreams were rarely this vivid. The smell of dirt clinging to the floor and the feel of the engine vibrating beneath his feet made him question whether he had, in fact, been transported away from the cemetery.  
  
"No, you're definitely dreaming," said a voice from deep within one of the shadows. He recognized the voice. Soft, low, blanketed by a thick Irish brogue. Angel stepped toward the shadow and Doyle emerged, his arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn the day he died, and the same flicker of mischief lit his dark blue eyes.  
  
Doyle stepped closer until he was only a few feet away from Angel, and all Angel could do was stare.  
  
"I used to dream about you a lot," Angel told him. "It was always the same. I was the one to stop the Beacon. But those dreams stopped awhile ago."  
  
"To be replaced by new ones, no doubt," Doyle replied. "You always were good at the beating yourself up thing. It's what you do."  
  
Angel asked, "Are you real?"  
  
"Am I alive?" Doyle said. "No. But I am really here talking to you."  
  
"A ghost?"  
  
"More like a messenger. It's what I do."  
  
"Doyle, I've wanted to tell you for years how sorry I am."  
  
"I knew you were going to say that. But really, man, it's unnecessary. I knew what I was doing. And I don't regret it. Death ain't so bad, once you get past the dyin' part." He paused, and Angel drank in the details of his features. He was surprised by the fact that Doyle's face had begun to blur in his normally faultless memory.  
  
"Really?" Angel asked. "You would do it over again?"  
  
"Well, if I'd known gettin' burned alive would be so damn painful, perhaps not," Doyle admitted. "But seein' as how that's in the past, why be bitter?" He uncrossed his arms and let them settle on his hips. "But I'm not here to talk about me. I'm here to talk about you. The Powers that Be are not happy right now."  
  
Angel blinked hard. What had he done to piss off the Powers now?  
  
"They sent me here to tell you to knock this crap off already."  
  
"What crap?"  
  
"Your repeat cruise through moral ambiguity. Remember who you're workin' for."  
  
"I have no idea who I'm working for," Angel said with a sigh. "I thought I was working for the Powers, but it turns out Jasmine was just toying with me, with us. She even orchestrated your death."  
  
"Who told you that? Skip? Since when did you start takin' minions of evil at their word?"  
  
"How did you know about Skip?"  
  
"I've been keepin' an eye on you, Angel. Lord knows someone has to."  
  
Angel digested that for a moment. Doyle had been hovering around, watching him live his life. Suddenly he felt ashamed.  
  
"I thought I told you to knock that off," Doyle said, seeming to read his thoughts. Then his eyes softened. "You've gotten yourself into quite a predicament, haven't you?" he said. It wasn't a question. He led Angel over to a set of stairs that Angel hadn't seen before, and they sat down.  
  
"Here's the thing," Doyle explained. "All that nonsense about Jasmine pulling the strings of your life like a twisted little puppetmaster? She invented that to puff herself up."  
  
Angel looked at him skeptically.  
  
"Seriously," Doyle continued. "She couldn't even predict that your boy was gonna punch her in the back of the head. How could she predict the most minute decisions of dozens of - no, hundreds - of people over the span of many years? She was just an opportunist who saw a chance to make her grand entrance."  
  
Angel nodded, beginning to see Doyle's logic. That in and of itself was scary.  
  
"Too bad Cordy had to take the brunt of that," Angel muttered softly.  
  
Doyle's eyes darkened. "Poor girl. She went through quite a lot after I passed off the visions. I didn't know that was gonna happen."  
  
"So, is she going to be OK?"  
  
"You're asking if she's gonna live. I really don't know. The Powers don't tell me everything. But death has given me a little perspective, and I know that she'll be OK no matter what happens. The princess done good."  
  
Doyle stood up, and the metal stairs creaked slightly under the sudden weight shift.  
  
"So, to reiterate," Doyle began. "No more moping about my death, and about Cordy, and about Connor. Just get off your ass and help the hopeless like you were meant to."  
  
"I'm not sure I can do that from Wolfram & Hart, and I can't go back on my deal."  
  
"Like I said, you've created quite a predicament for yourself. But you can help people from anywhere, if you'd stop feelin' so damn sorry for yourself."  
  
Angel swallowed hard. Doyle was right. He was being a twit.  
  
"I'm glad to see we got that settled. Now I must be off."  
  
Angel's chest got tight. Doyle was going to leave, and he would never see him again. "Wait!" he yelled, grabbing Doyle's arm. "Do you have to go now?"  
  
Doyle grinned. "The Powers didn't send me here so we could go bar- hoppin'. My luck's not that good."  
  
"I'm sorry," Angel said, running a hand through his hair. He was desperate. He needed more time.  
  
"Tell me," Angel said. "What's it like to be dead?"  
  
Doyle's smile widened, "Stall tactic. I like it. And I'm touched." He sat back down next to Angel.  
  
"Being dead has its perks. I don't have to deal with people hounding me for money I don't have. But I have to admit, I nearly wet my pants in those few minutes before I died."  
  
"Wet your pants? Why?"  
  
"I mean, apart from the excruciating pain of being cremated alive, I wasn't convinced there was an afterlife, let alone an afterlife for demons that didn't include fire and eternal damnation. Turns out I had nothing to worry about except boredom. But, of course, watchin' out for you is a full- time job."  
  
"Watching me...that's you job?"  
  
"How do you think I keep myself busy? Playin' badminton?"  
  
Angel's eyes got wide. "But I've never seen you, or even felt you around."  
  
"C'mon, Angel, this isn't 'Highway to Heaven.' I've got to be subtle- like."  
  
"So, are you always around?"  
  
"More or less," replied Doyle. "Sometimes I sneak off for an ale, but that never ends well. You're usually in a stinkin' heap o' trouble by the time I get back. And speakin' of gettin' back..."  
  
"I know. You have to go." He inhaled sharply. He didn't need the air-- just the mental pause. "Thanks for coming, and, you know, kicking me in the ass."  
  
"Don't mention it. What are friends for?" Doyle embraced him in a hug, then stepped back. The world began to shift around Angel, who clung hard to the threads of the dream, but soon he was back on the grass in the cemetery. He reached out instinctively to touch the headstone. It was cold and hard and every bit as real as Doyle had felt just moments before. He cleared the sleep from his mind and sat upright.  
  
"Doyle?" he called. "Are you still here?"  
  
Except for the crickets, he was answered by silence.  
  
"Please, give me a sign that that wasn't just a dream." The desperation in his plea startled him, and he found himself gripping the grass in his hands. A few empty seconds ticked by, and Angel was about to cough up the dream to wishful thinking when a subtle movement caught his eye. It was the beer can. It tipped slightly, and momentum took it the rest of the way, sending its contents spilling into the dirt below Doyle's headstone. The dirt soaked it up like a thirsty drunk, and Angel felt a small smile tug at his lips.  
  
It was OK. He could go home now. He still had a lot of problems to sort out -- problems he wasn't entirely sure he could solve -- but he felt better knowing that while he was protecting others, Doyle was protecting him.  
  
Even if his guardian did sneak off for a drink now and then. 


End file.
